Should We All Be Vegan?

A topic which is very hot in the news at the moment is global warming, how the environment is under massive threat, all due to the day to day actions that we make. I’ve always been interested in the environment, and have considered my actions as to how I can be more sustainable and environmentally friendly.

A topic that I wanted to focus around in todays blog post, is veganism, how it positively impacts the environment and whether we should all be considering cutting our animal produce intake a lot more.

So, I’m sure I don’t need to explain what being vegan is, but incase you didn’t know, it’s someone who leads a life without using or eating any animal produce. It’s a way of living that actively seeks to exclude cruelty to animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.

I recently read a really interesting article on Vegansim and it’s environmental impact, and it’s actually what prompted me to write this post. Research has been carried out, with the conclusion that if we all individually cut animal products out of out diets and lives, it could result in our individual carbon footprint decreasing by up to 73%. Obviously leading a vegan lifestyle isn’t the easy option, but even if we all started to gradually have more meat free/animal produce free days, think of the positive impact it would make!

Anyway, enough of me nattering on, I thought what better way to see whether being vegan is as easy as it seems, than to try it myself! I took it upon myself to attempt to go vegan for 24 hours – there were a few things that I wanted to look at throughout the day. The first one, which had been at the forefront of my mind, is being vegan feasible on a student budget. This was a big one for me, seeing as I’m tight on money as it is, does it work out cheaper or more expensive than my normal weekly shop. I also wanted to see how much it would fill me up. I lead a very active lifestyle, I’m into my fitness, and I tend to need to eat in a way that sustains this lifestyle – it was really interesting to see whether the diet change worked for me and my active way of life.

I’ll briefly talk you through my meal choices of the day. Starting off with my classic cup of tea, we all know I cannot function without this. Obviously, I normally use cows milk, but today I substituted this for Soya milk, and in all honesty, I couldn’t tell the difference in taste. You also get more for your money with soya milk – with it also having a longer shelf life than regular milk, in the long run it would work out to be more budget friendly. A trip to the gym was soon followed by vegan oats, which were a hit from me. They tasted like my normal oats, just slightly less sweet, which was made up for with the sweetness of the fruit anyway. Lunch, I opted for a quinoa salad, which I actually never wanted to end, don’t want to toot my own horn, but it tasted amazing. I then finished my day of being vegan with cheesy vegan pasta with broccoli and vegan sausages. This was the only meal which I wasn’t really won over by, with the sauce obviously being vegan cheese, it tasted fake and did get slightly repetitive towards the end. There were a few vegan snacks in there too, which I feel the need to say tasted better than any snacks I normally have. All in all, food wise, this was a success, there was nothing that I hated, and everything tasted really good!

Like I said at the beginning there were a few things I wanted to address throughout the day. We’ll begin with whether being vegan is actually feasible on a student budget. I can happily say that I think it is, all in all, my vegan shop came to around £10, which is roughly what I spend on a weekly shop already. I made a conscious effort to make sure that everything I picked up was the cheapest item there. So a lot of it was Tesco own brand – still tasted just as good.

The next thing, was whether the vegan diet would keep me feeling full as being very active, I’m pretty much always hungry. I was mega surprised, because eating like this actually kept me full up for the entire day – I normally eat little and often as this is what works best for me, so I tried to stick to this. I got hungry at the times I normally would do, so ate at these times – but I didn’t find myself super hungry throughout the day.

Overall eating vegan for a day really opened my eyes to how easy and affordable it actually is, I had heard so many myths about it being so expensive and hard, but I’ve just proven those wrong. Admittedly, I could have been a bit more adventurous with my foods, but I didn’t have the spare time for this. However, having said that it was easy for me, I would say that I’m not sure how easy it would be to sustain and whether after a while I would end up craving animal produce. I don’t think I’ll be going vegan anytime soon, I’ll just stick to vegetarianism as lets face it, I can’t go without cheese!

I try to eat plant-based as often as possible, buying all vegan products when at home, but the difficulty I find is eating out as if you go to a ‘normal’ restaurant, I struggle with vegetarian options, let alone vegan options. Yes there are vegan restaurants but I cannot expect my friends and family to always eat vegan alongside me as it is my choice not theirs. Hopefully over the next few years, especially with the new Global Warming report out, there will be more vegetarian and vegan options avaliable on menus and it will become easier to follow a plant-based diet outside the home as well. xx

I know exactly what you mean, ever since becoming vegetarian I always struggle so much when it comes to eating out – I normally end up going for the most basic thing available on the menu! Hopefully over the next few years the options available will broaden! xx

ABOUT ME

Han | 19
Brighton girl living in Leicester, getting a degree in Fashion Knitwear!
Runner and general fitness fanatic; I write about all things fashion and lifestyle related with the odd foodie post thrown into the mix too!